Dave Lucey

Agreed, prickly pear (both fruit and pads) are fantastic!  I grew up harvesting them in the southwestern US.  The fruits are incredibly seedy, but very tasty.  I find that the flavors vary from year to year on a plant.  I've assumed that it just varied by weather, but never did any digging.

You're right, they don't want to hear it, but it's been my experience as well.

The other question is how to get well suited breeds when they're picking them out at the local feed store.  Most folks aren't digging to find breeders.  Trying to convince feed stores to carry climate suited breeds is a tougher slog than seems sensible.  Building relationships with their buyers is where it's at but it's balanced against the FOMO of lost sales for not carrying, 'nothing but the hits'.

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hey Dave,
what is it that you're trying to learn?
There's a lot of different "masonry" style heating systems in the world. The goal always being to extract most of the heat from the exhaust gases.
To me the RMH is just the modern, more low tech take on that. The key being a complete combustion and a later heat extraction.
A lot of contraptions and inventions I see don't have that in mind and extract heat from incomplete combustion, which leads to creosote and potential disaster.

In many ways it's exploratory.  Not knowing them, I'm wondering if there is anything novel (to me) that they're doing.  A RMH is freaky efficient, but I'm always curious about angles for improvements.

My other thought is one of adoption.  If these models have some level of adoption and acceptance, is there something to be learned there.  In this case, my guess is around cultural heritage and beauty, but it is still another angle to consider.

Yeah, they would be expensive to buy, but I'm wondering if there is anything to be learned from them.  It sounds like Peter van den Berg knew about them with that shorty core.  Thanks!  It never came up when I searched for 'kakelugn' or 'swedish tile stove'.

I still want to go see the ones in Minneapolis...I wonder if they'll let me root around inside of one. :D

While we all love Rocket Mass Heaters, I've stumbled across another type of mass heater that I've not seen here before.  A Swedish Tile Stove or Kakelugn, designed in the 1700s to address a wood shortage.  I saw no references to it here, so I figured I'd start a topic to see if anyone has any experience with them.

It's entirely vertical, but shifts the exhaust smoke back and forth in baffles to increase the time it spent in the mass.  Exhaust temperatures were apparently 200-300 degrees F (about 100-150 C).  

A Youtube Introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHEmeydLTls&t=61s

A few blog posts about them:
https://asimn.org/turnblad-mansion-collections/what-is-a-kakelugn/
https://www.style-files.com/2016/03/11/the-story-behind-the-traditional-swedish-tile-stove/
https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/swedish-tiled-stoves

I'm seriously considering a trip to Minneapolis to check out the American Swedish Institute's collection of eleven kakelugn.

Has anyone had any experience with a Swedish Tile Stove?

Cheers,
Dave

Everything looked and worked fine for me, and the interface is clean.  

The only user-flow thing I could see is with the recurring button defaulting to on, you'll get an increase in support requests when folks buy a whole pie or 12 whole pies and accidentally set it to recurring.  If there is a way to get the paypal page to acknowledge that it is recurring, it would catch some amount of the accidents.

Thanks all for your input...I agree that it sounds like a homeopathic dose at 2T/5L, that was part of what piqued my curiosity and skepticism on this.

I also do baiting, but I use alfalfa leaves in pans overnight with the mists to moisten them into a paste.  The slugs just stay in there munching away until morning, then I release my ducks onto the pans.  There are a few places that I'd rather not turn my ducks onto though.

I'll give this a try on a couple of target plants and see if there is any sort of effect.  Watch this space. :D

I just need to say...there should be a 'Varmints' forum.

Has anyone had experience with 'Garlic Water' to deter slugs?  I have not.  I just heard about it and couldn't find anything on permies...so time for a new thread. :D

I'm in the Western Washington, where the slugs outnumber the people about 1000:1.  I generally solve the problem with some alfalfa to bait them and ducks to eat them, but there are some spots that this just doesn't work for.

So, listening to Gardeners' Question Time I came across an organic Hosta grower in England that swears by the garlic water.  They spray it on the soil around their in-ground hostas weekly from April to October and the panel there insisted that they didn't see signs of slug damage anywhere in the operation.  Once I was in front of a computer, this is the recipe I found, and it lines up to what they described.

Basic recipe:
-  Boil 2 bulbs of garlic in 2L of water, until soft.
-  Mash garlic to get all the goodies out, then strain out the paper
- That's it.  Let it cool and your concentrate is done.  Store it in the fridge

To use:
- Dilute by using 2 tablespoons per 5L of water.
- Put in your watering can or sprayer
- Sprinkle over the soil in the affected area weekly
- Use more during wet weather

So, the questions:
1. Have any of you done this?...Did you have any luck?
2. Can you think of any detrimental effect to this?  I sure can't.
3. Any clue on what the mechanism of action is?  Are slugs just vampires and hate garlic?

Josh Hoffman wrote:I prefer the tincture because we grow our own peppers. I am not a big fan of drying completely then powdering to use with food. I also do not like to make tincture from powders because of the mess of pressing the tincture out of the powder.

I'm completely behind not wanting to dry and pulverize peppers for cooking, but I think there is a place for dried peppers.  Anchos and Poblanos have different flavors, and anchos are just dried poblanos.  I will re-hydrate them before using (10 minutes in a bit of very hot water), but the altered flavors persist.  You can also roast either of them (dry or fresh) and end up with very different results.

Chile Colorado is a personal favorite dish, and it just doesn't taste right without colorados (dried anaheim chilis).

Ra Kenworth wrote:Dave: it was tea. I had something like COVID or walking pneumonia -- I've never had a cough linger for so long before. It was the first time I've used mullen, not expecting it to taste slightly sweet and very tasty! I've never learned to make tinctures. Mullen is plentiful enough in my yard.

Oh tinctures are super easy.  Take the herb you want to tincture, fill a jar about half full if it is leaf/flower, or a quarter full if it is berries, wood, or roots.  Then top it up with a neutral spirit like vodka.  close it up, label it, and give it a shake every day for about two months.  It's ready to use.  

Leave the material in there, it'll just get stronger with time.  Also those volumes are a rough starting place, if it's too strong, thin it out, too weak you add more.  I label the jar with the herbs in, the date I started it, and the weights of the herbs...so I could make it the same again next time.

A fresh ginger, mullen tea would be lovely.  I'll try it this afternoon.